I am sick of reading the Ebola blame casting here on Texas

[B2G]

I'm not even from there. Some of you act like the CDC is at the mercy of the locals. If that's true, why did they even bother to show up?

I can see how this is evolving around here. And it's only a matter of time before Congress figures out how to proceed...so far they've been pretty quiet.

It must be framed for maximum advantage for the party. It must be used to demonize the opponent and sway elections. It will escalate into a blame game rather than a constructive dialogue of how to shore things up and implement effective measures going forward.

Sorry, but this whole thing makes me sick. The enemy is not the other party, it is Ebola, and unless we figure that out and unite to defeat it, it has the very real potential to destroy us.

I'll continue to post on the outbreak but I am officially done with the political finger pointing aspect. It serves no purpose and is dangerously counterproductive and a time when we need our local and federal agencies partnering together to deal with this.

[Cali_Democrat]

1. Sometimes a fuck up is just a fuck up.

The folks in Texas fucked up.

Not sure why you would be offended when people call it out.

What if many more get sick in Texas because of Ebola? Why did Perry turn down Medicaid expansion when Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country? Now they got Ebola.

These are important questions.

[YarnAddict]

2. From what I understand

the Federal funding for Medicaid expansion would be temporary, and fter it ended, it would be up to the individual states to continue funding a massive program. It would be very expensive.

Also, don't know about Texas, but my niece in Wisconsin is on something called Badgercare, which (I believe) is a supplement to Medicaid. So at least in that state there is a state plan that probably does what a Medicaid expansion would do. Maybe that's true in other states as well.

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Here

• The federal government will pay for most (90% - 100%) of the Medicaid expansion when it is implemented in 2014, but states would be required to pay for up to 10% percent of it by 2020.

http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacares-medicaid-expansion.php

Only 10%...the Federal govt would cover the rest.

It's fun to watch people here try and justify the GOP denying Medicaid millions of Americans.

Amusing to say the least....

[ProfessorGAC]

22. You Understand Incorrectly

This is easy to look up. You should do so rather than spout right wing inaccuracies.

[B2G]

4. Duncan isn't a citizen

How would Medicaid expansion have made a difference?

If 'many more' get sick in Texas, Medicaid expansion is gonna be the least of our worries.

[Cali_Democrat]

7. There's a risk that other Texans may get sick from this deadly virus.

The GOP's failure to expand Medicaid in Texas means that millions of people aren't covered. They don't have to get sick just from Ebola...they could get sick from a number of other things.

They denied coverage to Texans all because they hate Obama.

They're a bunch of dumb fucksticks.

It is amusing to watch you defend them though.

[yellowcanine]

15. Medicaid expansion would mean fewer uninsured using ERs as their primary provider.

Maybe they would have been able to pay a little more attention to the patient the first time.

ERs tend to be understaffed and swamped with people who should be seen in a doctor's office.

[B2G]

16. And maybe we're better off with them going to a hospital ER

Rather than showing up at your neighborhood doctor's office or Urgent Care. They don't have isolation facilities...which just mean more people will be exposed.

[yellowcanine]

18. The people using the ER for primary health care don't have Ebola.

They have colds, flu, urinary tract infections, strep throat, etc. Point is they tie up the ER and over burden the staff. So when a really serious case does show up they wait longer before being seen at all and maybe don't get the attention deserved. It is simple math. Too many people, too few facilities.

[jwirr]

19. No, if many more get sick in Texas that is just exactly when you will see how important Medicaid

Expansion is. People without insurance do not go to the doctor at the first sign of illness. They wait to see if it will go away. And if it does not go away and it turns out to be ebola that many more people will be exposed. It is all about early detection.

For many of us Obamacare, Medicaid Expansion and single payer is not just about having a good system. We have been expecting a pandemic and know that without a system like that we will be as bad off as the countries in Africa that do not have adequate healthcare systems. The leaders of Texas do not seem to understand that.

[former9thward]

10. It wasn't just "The folks in Texas fucked up." There were others...

Obama administration scraps quarantine regulations

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.
The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. They also would have expanded requirements for airlines to report ill passengers to the CDC and mandated that airlines collect and maintain contact information for fliers in case they later needed to be traced as part of an investigation into an outbreak.

Airline and civil liberties groups, which had opposed the rules, praised their withdrawal.

The Air Transport Association had decried them as imposing "unprecedented" regulations on airlines at costs they couldn't afford. "We think that the CDC was right to withdraw the proposed rule," association spokeswoman Elizabeth Merida said Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union had objected to potential passenger privacy rights violations and the proposal's "provisional quarantine" rule. That rule would have allowed the CDC to detain people involuntarily for three business days if the agency believed they had certain diseases: pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, plague, cholera, SARS, smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria or viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-01-quarantine_N.htm

[Cali_Democrat]

11. The issue wasn't with the quarantine

The issue was with the idiots at the hospital who sent the sick man home even though he told them that he traveled to Liberia.

[former9thward]

12. He never would have made it to Texas if the CDC rules had been in place.

[Cali_Democrat]

13. Says you

He lied to the airlines and they didn't know he was sick.

[former9thward]

25. Defending the scrapping of the CDC rules.

I would not expect anything different from you.

[Cali_Democrat]

27. Nobody scrapped CDC rules

They were rules that were never in place.

[former9thward]

30. The proposed CDC rules were scrapped.

In 2010. Defending that?

[yellowcanine]

20. Would not have made any difference. He was showing no symptoms when he boarded the plane.

And the airlines did not know about the contact with Ebola because he lied on the form. If the CDC rules had been in place he still would have lied on the form and without symptoms the airlines would not have done anything differently.

[former9thward]

26. So we didn't need the CDC rules.

Ok, got it... We wouldn't want to cost the airlines any money..

[yellowcanine]

28. I don't have an opinion on the CDC rules, just saying that in this case they made no difference.

Lighten up.

[YarnAddict]

3. I'm with you about this

It's kind of like if we were invaded by hostile beings from another planet. Countries would probably stop squabbling amongst themselves, and confront the enemy that is a threat to everyone.

(Hmmmmmmm . . . I think maybe I've watched way too many sci-fi movies.)

[mindwalker_i]

5. Well if Rick Perry hadn't lured it in

with promises of no government intervention...

[deutsey]

6. My beef is with the "Government is the problem" mentality

that is leaving us all (including the 1 percenters who have their heads up their bottom lines) vulnerable to an increasing number of threats.

Rick Perry is the living embodiment of that key tenet of Reaganism.

[seabeyond]

9. it is really limiting and missing the big story. for sure. nt

[pennylane100]

14. The only finger pointing I find valid

is the cluster fuck that occurred when the Ebola victim first went to the hospital.

I understand that he did notify them that he had recently arrived from Liberia. Although he was less than truthful about his contact with a dying Ebola victim (the daughter of his landlord) they knew he was from a country with an Ebola outbreak and displaying symptoms that would be present when contagious. THEY SENT HIM HOME.

There can be some discussion about who exactly was responsible for this terrible decision by the hospital to send him home with antibiotics However, pointing out that this was one of the most irresponsible acts imaginable is not demonizing anyone. The people he was in contact before returning to the hospital now have to spend the next three weeks worrying about the possibility they may have contacted a deadly disease.

It is a stretch to politicize this hospital's irresponsible actions, however if we are going to get this thing under control, we must learn by our mistakes. Part of that learning is analyzing the mistakes made in Texas and to avoid them in future cases. I think that is more important than worrying about political agenda's, real or imagined.

[janlyn]

38. Well, said!

[uppityperson]

44. I am appalled at how the host family has been treated, quarantined in an infected apartment rather

than being moved to quarantine in a clean place.

We must learn from these mistakes.

[Eleanors38]

17. Be thankful Duncan didn't land in Florida.

[Capt. Obvious]

32. All sorts of things could have happened

He could have had his face eaten off by a bath salt zombie which would then go around infecting other faceless people.

He could have walked into George Zimmerman's neighborhood.

He could have gone on It's A Small World and infected thousands of kids and their parents forcing them to go on that crappy ride.

[Eleanors38]

40. Actually, the results would have been more prosaic...

An asinine blow-off about Florida on DU.

A state which voted Obama.

Twice.

[Vinca]

21. I'm sorry, but Texas deserves all kinds of blame.

They are the state with the highest number of uninsured people and how did they react to the ebola crisis yesterday? They quarantined a family in an apartment with infectious materials and closed 13 clinics that do health screenings for women along with abortion services. As icing on the cake, the Texas governor is on his way to Iowa to campaign. I'm sure there are plenty of fine people in Texas, but the loony tunes seem to have the numbers and they're determined to destroy the place.

[Blue_Roses]

41. the "looney tunes" have the $$$

and use it to persuade politics -- that and plenty of churches.

[ecstatic]

23. Not only were major mistakes made, but they're still being made

I don't know who is to blame, but it doesn't seem like anyone with an ounce of common sense is in charge over there. They didn't even think about the waste in the home until Anderson Cooper brought it up. And the image of that guy cleaning up the vomit outside with zero protective gear on? Unreal!

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. DEFEND TEXAS!!!!!

Yeesh.

[Capt. Obvious]

29. REMEMBER THE EBOLAMO!!

[cwydro]

31. that

made me laugh out loud. Still giggling.

[Capt. Obvious]

33. Thanks. I'm giggling too.

[Blue_Roses]

42. ...

I needed that chuckle, because I live in Texas

[kentauros]

34. Your words will fall on deaf ears (or blind eyes)

You gotta remember this one fact:

The #1 Sport on DU is Bashing Texas.

Those of us that do live here and call it Home just have to sigh sometimes at the unmitigated hate coming from supposed "fellow" liberals around here...

[Capt. Obvious]

35. I don't think anyone should be bashing Texas

We should be bashing Florida.

[kentauros]

36. There's no good reason to bash any region.

Go after the idiots in charge, usually republicans. It's so much more satisfying making fun of Gohmert and Christie than entire states.

[sendero]

37. I live in TX..

... and I've always said "as long as there is a Florida, Texas has nothing to be embarrassed about"

[amandabeech]

45. Texas Health Presbyterian is probably no worse than many, many hospitals all over the country.

This was the first Ebola case, and really, despite the terrible news coming out of West Africa, it is likely that like many people, the people at THP were focused primarily on what types of cases are typical in their ER/D. That's not a Texas condition, but a human condition. Ebola just seemed a world away.

There are superior teaching hospitals in nearly every state where something like this might not have been missed. I suspect that some of the universities in Texas have such institutions. I actually lived in East Texas for a year in the '80s for work, and I seem to recall that U-T and Baylor had fine institutions that might have caught this first case. Maybe.

What is certain is that the level of awareness has increased, and I hope that people are seriously thinking about preparedness and starting to make realistic plans.

From here on out, anyone who has traveled to any part of Africa will receive extra special attention at any ER, urgent care clinic or doctor's office. Unfortunately, it took a fumble by the first hospital to get a walk in Ebola case to do that. And it cold have happened in many, many places.

[RandiFan1290]

39. Such thin skin for such tough Texans

Buck up little campers!

[BlindTiresias]

43. Lol

Are you by any chance from Texas?